Download PDF | Mission and Conversion Proselytizing in the Religious History ofthe Roman Empire, Martin Goodman (Author), Oxford University Press 1996.
106 Pages
PREFACE
THIS volume contains the Wilde Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion, more or less in the form in which they were delivered on eight Monday afternoons in Oxford between January and March 1992. I am grateful to the electors for the opportunity they gave me to bring together studies on which I had been working for some time and which, without the deadline imposed by the lectures, might well have continued indefinitely.
My own interest in the subject of mission and conversion in late antiquity can be dated precisely to the autumn of 1985, when I applied for the Solon Fellowship in Jewish-Christian Relations in the Graeco-Roman Period at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and a Senior Research Fellowship at St Cross College. Asked to put forward a research topic to justify my application for this highly desirable position, I proposed an examination of Jewish and pagan proselytizing in relation to Christian mission.
This book therefore constitutes the fruit of my five years as a fulltime Fellow at the Centre for Hebrew Studies. I hope it may serve as a substantive memorial of my gratitude to the Centre, and to the Solon Foundation and Felix Posen, and as a reminder of congenial and stimulating company in St Cross. During the final stages of checking the typescript I have benefited greatly from pleasant surroundings and helpful colleagues as a Fellow for six months in 1993 of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am very grateful to the Institute, and especially to Aharon Oppenheimer and Isaiah Gafni, for their invitation and' hospitality.
I have been aware at all times while engaged on this research that I have strayed far outside my expertise. I am not a theologian. I am often baffled by what theologians write, and I am aware that the questions I ask often in turn seem naive to them. Specialists in ancient philosophy, New Testament, patristics, and rabbinics may well uncover numerous errors which reveal my inadequate grasp of their disciplines. I apologize in advance, but I also plead two advantages in attempting to cover so wide a field despite my incompetence. One is the hope that a study of the religious systems of the early Roman empire alongside each other may generate interesting questions which do not usually arise when those systems are studied in isolation.
My second hope, perhaps over-optimistic, is that my perspective as an outsider only vaguely aware of the debates standard within these various disciplines may enable me sometimes to broach issues which are taken for granted by scholars immersed in more traditional problems. In an attempt to eradicate my worst blunders, I have shamelessly accepted help from very many generous colleagues. John Ashton, Louis Feldman, Paula Fredriksen, Thomas Kraabel, Simon Price, Christopher Rowland, Richard Rutherford, Ed Sanders, and Tom W right all read all or part of the typescript at different stages. Sebastian Brock and Fergus Millar both made many useful comments and provided much moral support and encouragement during the lectures. I have been helped in various ways by Polymnia Athanassiadi, Al Baumgarten, Garth Fowden, Robin Lane Fox, Daniel Frank, Keith Griineberg, Sam Lieu, Danny Schwartz, Norman Solomon, and Sacha Stern. Geza Vermes has provided encouragement over many years.
I owe a great deal to the inspiration of the writings of Shaye Cohen and John Gager. Earlier versions of particular chapters were presented to the Jewish History, Ancient History, New Testament, and Religions in the Mediterranean seminars in Oxford, to the Fellows' seminar at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, to seminars at Birmingham, Boston, Cambridge, Durham, and Princeton, and at the conference of the European Association for Jewish Studies held in Berlin in 1987. I have benefited greatly from comments made by many of the participants in these seminars. Parts of Chapters 4, 6, and 7 build upon studies published in various places between 1989 and 1992; I have referred to them at the appropriate places in each chapter.
I have retained as far as possible the style of the lectures as they were delivered, adding references in the footnotes to modern scholarship only when they seemed necessary to clarify the argument or support a contentious point. The notes should not be taken as a discussion of the history of scholarship on each question, which would have required a very much larger work. Nor does the bibliography aim at completeness, although I have included, besides the items cited in the notes, some of the more important studies which deal with the general themes I have addressed. When so many people have helped, it is more than usually important to stress that I alone bear full responsibility for the remaining mistakes and that the willingness of friends to help and advise does not imply their approval even of my basic approach to the subject. During the course of my research I have become aware of the significance attached to this subject by modern theologians of various persuasions.
I am not perturbed by this; I am pleased if colleagues show an interest in my work, whatever the reason. But I must emphasize that, although I have an instinctive sympathy with those who advocate the greatest possible tolerance of other peoples' behaviour and beliefs, I myself have tried to approach this study simply as a historian attempting to explain a curious phenomenon in the religious mentality of past generations. I write as a Jew, which must, I assume, affect the way I understand religious history, but I have not been consciously concerned either to defend or to decry any religious tradition, nor have I sought to discern a clear theology in evidence which seemed to me ambiguous. In one area in particular I was surprised by my own conclusions. At the beginning of my investigation I took for granted the proselytizing zeal of early Christians, and only after surveying much evidence did I produce the present Chapter 5; indeed, I should admit that I changed my mind with some reluctance, since the more nuanced picture which resulted has somewhat complicated the argument of the book as a whole. Emma-Jayne Muir has typed the whole manuscript and seen it through all too many drafts.
I am very grateful to her for her patience and good humour. I would never have written this book if my wife and children had not put up with the very considerable domestic disruption caused by my acceptance of a research fellowship, and now a permanent post, in Oxford. Sarah has tried for some years to find a more attractive title for the lectures than Mission and Conversion, and it is with some regret that I feel unable to use either Gone Fishing or Missionary Positions: Some Wilde Lectures. I dedicate this book to my children of whom the youngest, Charlotte, arrived on the Saturday evening between the second Wilde Lecture and the third. Oriental Institute, Oxford, WolJson College, and Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
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